Socioecology of a terrestrial salamander: Females and males as territorialresidents and invaders

Male and female Red-Backed Salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) establish terri tories under cover objects (rocks, logs) on forest floors of northeastern N orth America. Because females should be food limited and males mate limited in terms of fitness, ae tested the hypothesis that territorial residents a nd invaders should differ intersexually in certain morphological or behavio ral traits. We displaced males and females from cover objects on the forest door at Mountain Lake Biological Station, Virginia, and monitored homing b y displaced individuals and invasion of vacated cover objects by novel indi viduals. Neither residents nor invaders differed significantly intersexuall y in snout-vent lengths, total lengths, or sizes of cover objects inhabited . Also, the number of male versus female residents that successfully return ed to their cover objects did not differ significantly, However, significan tly more females than males invaded vacated cover objects, and they did so significantly faster. These data suggest that males and females play differ ent strategies related to territorial acquisitions, which may reflect their different requirements for maximizing individual fitness.